


Golden Years

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Rope (1948)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Outsider POV on relationship, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 10:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: A look at David Kentley's relationship with Brandon Shaw from 1938 to 1948.





	Golden Years

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in roughly the same basic universe as [Caught Beneath The Landslide](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12599776/chapters/28699540). Also a continuation/expansion of [this](http://astralhux.tumblr.com/post/170287453775/september-1938-kentley-the-registrar-said), which you don't have to read to understand this, although its parts do sort of act as bookends for this particular fic. Basically I've always loved fics where an outsider pov examined the main relationship, and I've been curious for a while about David's mindset, so I wrote this (in two days, literally I could not stop typing, it was ridiculous). Hope y'all enjoy! Kudos and comments are much, much appreciated. You can find me [here](http://astralhux.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.

David had never been analytical. It just wasn’t in his blood. Things either were or they weren’t; it was as simple as that. But as the months passed at Somerville he began to notice a nascent understanding come up in his brain with regards to analytical thinking—towards Brandon. To everyone else he remained pleasant and straightforward for the rest of his life.

The two of them ran in separate circles. David had discovered early on that without the awkwardness of having to share a room, it was as easy to make friends at boarding school as it had been at camp or at the country club. Several of the boys came from families that Mr. Kentley had spoken of, and that was good enough for an introduction. The others were just friendly. David joined a good many clubs—tennis, sculling, chess, Latin. He wanted to join yearbook but they didn’t allow eighth graders—although the president of the club, a senior with kind eyes, said he liked David’s enthusiasm, and would he like him to put his name down for the year following, when David would be eligible? It was like that for David, it always had been. Easy to make friends and easier still to keep them.

Brandon was popular too—or anyway, so it seemed. The boys he went around with were generally not the same boys David knew—except the Bradley twins, George and Richard, who were fair-haired and smiled a lot and generally seemed to get along with everyone. It was with them that the analytical part of David’s brain began to awaken, one day in mid-October, when he’d been at Somerville a month and a half. His mother was still calling every day nearly in tears and he was standing in the hall wiping at his own face after one such call on a Wednesday evening when George Bradley came up to him. His mouth was tight; it was the first time David had ever seen such an intense, angry look on someone’s face.

“I could kill that Brandon Shaw,” George snarled. “Is he in your room right now?”

David shook his head. George grabbed his arm; he was shaking. Together they walked into David and Brandon’s dorm room and shut the door.

“We’re supposed to go to study hall in five minutes,” David started, glancing at the watch his father had given him for his fourteenth birthday the week previous. George glared at him.

“ _Fuck_ study hall,” he said. “Simmons is so old he won’t notice two missing boys. I need to talk to someone about Brandon. You’re his roommate, you need to  _stop_ him.” And his voice was so insistent—not to mention David was stunned, still, by cursing—that David shut his mouth, and sat on his bed. He invited George to sit in his desk chair. George breathed in very deeply, pulling his hand through his hair. Then he said:

“My brother is in the infirmary right now.”

David’s eyes went wide. “Because of  _Brandon?”_

George nodded. David realized he was holding himself so tense because he was trying not to cry. He held out his handkerchief with the K embroidered in gold thread at the edge. They sat together for several minutes unspeaking. Little by little the story emerged: Brandon and Richard had been together by themselves during a free period when George was in class. Apparently Brandon had convinced Richard it would be amusing to sneak into the biology lab and sneak some of the animals in their terrariums into the library and let them loose among the shelves. George was uncertain what exactly had happened, because Richard was still being looked at by the doctor and Brandon’s version of the story was of course twisted in his favor, but somehow one of the snakes had gotten loose from its cage and bitten Richard on the wrist.

“He’s lucky it wasn’t a venomous snake,” George finished, wiping at his eyes, “or else my brother might already be dead. Talley was walking by right then so Brandon couldn’t run like I’m sure he wanted to—you know how he is. And apparently Brandon had already taken a few of the cages into the hall so they had to cancel all the biology classes for the afternoon because the building had to be secured while they try to catch the animals he let loose.”

“I thought he wanted to take them to the library—”

“Yeah, well.” George snorted, a violent, contemptuous noise. “Brandon’s such a freak, who knows what’s going on in his head.”

David didn’t know what to say. “Is Richard going to be okay?”

“I think so.” George folded the handkerchief back up and handed it to David. “It wasn’t a deep cut or anything, it’s just—do you understand, Kentley? It’s the principle of the thing. Brandon did it to deliberately hurt Rich. I’m sure of that.”

“Why would he want to hurt Richard?” Just last week when Mr. Franklin’s wife Catherine had gone to the hospital for surgery of some type Richard had been the one who started up a collection to buy her a bouquet of flowers in the city. He wrote poetry their English teacher said was suited for a junior or a senior and he was in the choir; weekends he got on the city bus with the other boys to go practice at Juilliard. He was as kind as George; it didn’t make sense.

“Richard wouldn’t let him cheat on a test in history,” George said, “and Brandon made a D. So why do you think?” He stood, he brushed his pants free of some invisible dirt. “You have to stop him,” he said again. “No one else likes him, anyway.”

David pondered over this long into the evening, through study hall—George had been right, Simmons was asleep at the desk when the two of them snuck in—and his shower, and turning down his bed for the night. Brandon came in ten minutes after curfew with an unreadable expression on his face; he flopped down on his bed and pulled out one of those thin crime mystery things he was always reading. David gave it a few minutes. Then he said:

“Is everything okay?”

Brandon shot him a look. “You can just say you heard about what happened in Talley’s class,” he snapped.

“Well, what happened, then?” David asked. The slow-awakening analytical side of his brain reminded him that Brandon got impatient a lot, at little things that didn’t actually require so much energy.

“I had to go to the principal,” Brandon said, in a long-suffering drawl. “It took hours.” He frowned at his hands. “They kept saying I’m lucky I’m not s-suspended, as if they’re doing me a _f-favor._ ”

Brandon’s callous attitude towards school often shocked David, who still after six or so weeks was not used to it. “Really, Brandon,” David said.

“Don’t you start,” Brandon said. He tossed his book to the floor and sat up. His hair had come out of its Brylcreem and lay in messy strands about his forehead. “The only reason I got caught is because I was stupid enough to use someone like _R-Richard B-Bradley_ to help me. Next time it’ll g-go better—”

“Next time?” David said, incredulous. “Brandon, you can’t do this a second time! You know they’ll be watching you now.”

Brandon repeated him, mockingly. His eyes—David didn’t know what it was, but there were times when Brandon scared him. There was a coldness about his face David could not describe.

“I’m l-lucky I didn’t decide to drag you along,” he muttered, more to himself than to David, who felt first affronted and then annoyed with himself—as if he wanted Brandon to ask him to break the rules! He said:

“You’re _lucky_ you didn’t get in worse trouble,” and Brandon rolled his eyes. They were both quiet for a while; Brandon picked his book up and set it on his pillow. He rubbed at his eyes, he looked strangely exhausted.

“Why did you even—” David took a breath. You had to be delicate with Brandon, he reminded himself. “Why did you feel the need to do this at all?”

Brandon shrugged. His face was blank.

“Richard could have been hurt—”

“It was just a little fucking garden snake,” Brandon snapped. “It barely n-nicked his skin. No one’s going to say this, but y-you know he stuck his hand into that cage. He w-was grabbing at it on his own. I h-had nothing to do with it.” His voice was sharp, defensive. It made David remember—when he was seven, he’d thrown a brick through his elementary school art window once on a dare; it was the last time he’d ever done anything like that. The school asked why he did it and he’d said because the other boys had made him. _That sounds to me like an excuse, Dave,_ his father had said, gently. Immediately following David had apologized, crying; his mother had wanted to take action and pull him from the school, but his father had paid for the damages and David had stayed. He’d stopped interacting with the other boys.

Brandon’s voice was like that—except he was fourteen. He’d be fifteen in a month, if David remembered right. It felt—odd, comparing David at seven to Brandon at fourteen.

“It was your idea, though, Brandon,” David said, and Brandon looked at him as though he were missing some obvious point. He turned away and glared at his book. David sighed. Then he opened his history text, and began to study.

~

Over winter break Simmons, the philosophy teacher, died. He was in his late eighties and no one was surprised. David hadn’t really known him, but there was a memorial service, and the boys who he’d taught seemed upset he was gone. Brandon slumped in his seat until Parker, the English teacher, told him to sit up. He was increasingly irritable lately; he seemed restless, looking for something he couldn’t find. He was out past curfew often; once, he’d woken David at midnight, coming in through the window because their room was on the first floor.

“I’d like to introduce all of you to Mr. Simmons’ replacement, Mr. Rupert Cadell,” said Dean Francis. “I’m sure you’ll show him the same respect as you showed your old teacher.” He stepped back, and a tall, thin man came forward. His hair was the same silvery shade as David’s father’s. He had a faint limp; his suit was smart. When he spoke it was with a faint drawl; for some reason, it reminded David of Brandon.

“I’m opening a philosophy club,” Mr. Cadell said. “I understand that only sophomores and above are allowed to take the class, but I believe anyone can learn philosophy.” He winked at the boys in the front row. Beside David Brandon had sat up a little straighter; there was something in his eyes which, as usual, David could not read.

“It will start next Monday,” Mr. Cadell said. “Eight a.m. sharp, in my office. You can see the registrar for further details.” Then he stepped down, to mild, polite applause.

“Thank you, Mr. Cadell,” said Dean Francis. “Regularly scheduled classes will resume now.”

Brandon was faintly vibrating. “Tell Daniels I’m sick or something,” he said.

David frowned. Daniels was their Latin teacher. “Why—”

“B-Because I have to go sign up for that c-club,” Brandon said.

“You could do it after—”

“For Christ’s sake, David,” Brandon said, and David sighed. It was always the wrong thing with Brandon. No matter what, it was somehow not enough, not ever enough.

“You know I won’t lie, Brandon,” David said. Brandon rolled his eyes:

“Well, whatever,” he said. “I’m s-signing up. Want me to put your name too?” and this was so unexpected, so uncharacteristically friendly, that David nodded without hardly thinking of the consequences, or if he’d even really be interested himself. Brandon’s mouth quirked at the corner; he walked out of the auditorium ahead of the other boys. David watched for a moment Rupert Cadell shaking the dean’s hand, and the hands of some of Simmons’ former students. He wondered what it was that had interested Brandon about this at all. Then he saw his friend Nicholas Turner, and he followed him out.

~

The philosophy club met biweekly. Rupert—he insisted on being called as such—was strange, but in a way that made you want to get to know him better. He was charming; he seemed to like teaching, in a way that no other teachers David had ever met did. Certainly he liked the club. It was six boys—David, Brandon, a sophomore named Jim Cooke, and three boys who were either juniors or seniors. The Bradley twins asked David—jokingly, he thought—how he could stand to be in a club with Brandon. David didn’t really like to talk badly about other people, but to make them laugh he pointed out that he shared a room with Brandon, and the club meetings were really nothing. In fact this was mildly truthful; alone in their room Brandon had always been a little much. David had hoped his restless energy would be better channeled now that this club had started up, but it seemed to have worsened—Brandon had a penchant for philosophy, or anyway for talking about it. He seemed to think the sun rose and set around Rupert Cadell. If he wasn’t quoting him, he was quoting Nietzsche. He’d gotten some kind of idea in his head that he was one of the superior beings, the Supermen, which Nietzsche’s philosophy revolved around. David could not tell if Brandon thought the same of anyone else, but he did notice Brandon had stopped interacting even with the group of boys he’d been with since the start of the year. The Bradley twins, and Nicholas, and Alex, all of David’s closest friends, were remarking on his increasing isolation, his rudeness which had become worse even since September. The analytical side of David’s brain, now fully aware of Brandon, noticed his arrogant elitism, which had always been there to some degree, had grown since Rupert had come. Like a poisonous sucking influence.

In June the night before they were to leave David and Brandon packed together in their dorm room. “I can’t wait until next semester,” David said. “ _Ninth grade,_ Brandon. Can you believe it?”

“Generally, it follows eighth, yeah,” Brandon said. He sounded tired; David could not see his face. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but he knew about how well that would be received. _If you acted kinder to everyone, they’d like you more,_ he thought, but he didn’t say it. Tomorrow he was going home; his mother was going to throw a party with all his closest friends from the tennis club he joined during the summer. He wouldn’t have to see Brandon for three whole months.

“Well…” David snapped his suitcase shut. “I’m going to take a shower, I guess.” He headed out with his bathrobe and bar of soap. By the time he came back Brandon was sleeping, or so it seemed. David sat on his bed. He hoped the Bradleys wouldn’t leave tomorrow until David was able to see them one last time; he needed to get their address.

~

Phillip Morgan was nothing at all like Brandon Shaw. He was quiet, reserved. He wasn’t much for conversation; after his aunt and uncle had left the dorm David and his parents—his mother a little better off this time, knowing what to expect—had tried asking Phillip what sorts of things he did, what school he’d gone to prior to Somerville, but Phillip hadn’t seemed to want to answer. His eyes were perpetually exhausted, ringed with the bruised violet of sleeplessness. He had wild, tousled hair an inch or two longer than everyone else’s and his clothes didn’t quite seem to fit him. He spent all his time either in the piano room or at track practice—they were the only two things he seemed interested in at all. David was having an even harder time figuring Phillip out than he had Brandon. But it was his second year here, and he had all his friends, and new ones besides, like Kenneth Lawrence, so he didn’t let it bother him. A boy like Phillip would be swallowed up within weeks at Somerville; if David were a different sort of person, he might have felt sorry for him.

But then Phillip started going around with Brandon. This was so unexpected David thought perhaps he was seeing things. He knew they’d met at the second philosophy club meeting of the year, because for some reason Brandon had invited Phillip to come along—David tried meting out the reason, but Phillip kept his mouth shut—but he hadn’t thought Brandon would find Phillip particularly interesting. Or superior, or whatever strange criteria he looked for in friends these days. And yet, everywhere Phillip went, there was Brandon. Or vice versa. Like a singular, small pack of wolves. Like buddies in an old Western, the last two alive in the town. David, George, and Richard placed bets on how long it would last. All of them lost. It was fine to watch Phillip slowly lose that caged, haunted look as the weeks went on. It was fine to see Brandon stop stalking the campus alone, in that solitary world he’d created for himself. But David could not, did not understand their relationship.

“So Brandon,” David said, casually, one evening in the dorm. It was lights out, but he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut—it was impossible to catch Phillip by himself any other time of the day. “What’s, um. You two are good friends, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” Phillip said, with his nose buried in a book by someone named E.M. Forester. Presumably he was reading it for class; David had never seen books by that author in his father’s library.

“Is he.” David hesitated. Phillip didn’t have that same edge as Brandon, but if they were spending time together you could never really be sure. Anyway David still hadn’t learned to be analytical around anyone else, and he couldn’t read Phillip’s expression from where it was hidden behind the pages. “Do you get along?”

Phillip’s mouth twisted at the corner. “Well, obviously.”

David could have hit himself for asking such an obvious question. “I mean, so, okay—” He didn’t know how to say it tactfully. “You know Brandon—you know how he is. Right?”

Phillip stilled. “What do you mean?”

“Like how he’s… different?” David scrubbed at the back of his neck. “He doesn’t… uh, he doesn’t really get along with anyone?”

Phillip made a sound which might have been a laugh under different circumstances. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said, in kind of a wry tone. A year ago David would not have picked up on his sarcasm at all; now it only took him a few seconds to realize Phillip wasn’t being serious, and to swallow down his immediate response of _how blind have you been, then?_ Instead he said:

“But really, Phillip… he’s not—he’s not _nice._ ” David frowned. “You know what he did last year to Richard Bradley, right?”

Phillip was still staring in his book. There was a faint line of tension forming along his jaw. “I know,” he said. “He told me.”

This was unexpected. “Well, I just mean, I’m just trying to say—”

“I know what you’re trying to say.” Phillip turned his head a little; his eyes caught in the lamp on his desk were sepia-toned. “Look, why does it matter? You all play pranks all the time.”

“Yes—” David began, hesitant. How to explain— With Brandon, the pranks always felt personal. Like he was deliberately seeking a target for attack. There was a cruelty behind everything Brandon did which was unnecessary. The same laser-focused intensity he’d carried last year. David often thought Brandon was trying way too hard at something he did not understand.

He became aware that Phillip was still watching him, waiting for an answer. David sighed. “Brandon’s just meaner,” he said, because he could not voice what he was thinking. Phillip rolled his eyes, turned back to his book.

“It’s not like anyone actually leaves him alone,” he said, after a little while. His voice was muffled between the pages, but David heard him clearly. The statement was a bit—odd. Incredulous, even. Leave Brandon alone? For what? That was the last thing in the world Brandon wanted. Even David could see that. Brandon was always asking for attention—shouting out in class, disrupting study hall, causing some kind of ruckus in the cafeteria. He had a strange wolf’s cackle of a laugh which carried, distinguishable, across the halls. He almost never shut up except when they were testing, and even then he drummed his fingers or shook his leg, like currents of electricity ran through him instead of blood. He was worst of all in Rupert’s club meetings, where he didn’t have to be silent, and where Rupert—David wasn’t sure exactly how to put it, but he thought Rupert indulged Brandon, like a particularly interesting specimen in a zoo. There was no way Brandon didn’t want attention, constant. David wondered if he’d end up on Broadway when they were all older.

To Phillip he said, “You know he’s the one who starts everything,” and then, when Phillip didn’t answer: “You _know_ that, right? Brandon’s the instigator in every situation? He gets himself into these things on purpose and then he complains when he can’t get out—”

“David,” Phillip said, quite suddenly. His voice was very tense. “Just. Jesus. Just shut the hell up, would you?” And this was so surprising—Phillip never raised his voice—that David did shut up. Not long after Phillip went out to shower, and when he came back he turned his lamp off pointedly and lay down facing the wall. David knew he’d said something wrong, but he wasn’t sure what. His father was always telling him he needed more tact, but he didn’t know how to get it. Eventually he slept, feeling uneasy.

In the morning Phillip was as usual silent during breakfast. As the day progressed he seemed to warm up somewhat—after his piano class he and David shared a history class in which due to their names they sat next to each other. David was pleased to see Phillip smiling a little. Pleased until class ended and they walked out and Brandon was there, leaning against the wall. He waited for Phillip outside of some of his classes when he had a free period; it was an odd thing to do, though David couldn’t say exactly why. Briefly Brandon looped an arm around Phillip’s neck; he leaned in and whispered something which made Phillip laugh. For the first time since the night before David saw him relax, really, almost leaning into Brandon as the two of them made their way down the hall.

“What a freak,” George said, coming up behind David. It was clear who he meant. David laughed, the sound hollow in his throat. He didn’t know why he felt jealous of the two of them, their secretive closeness and their cold isolation. He had friends—he had plenty of friends. He smiled at George, and the two of them walked together to their earth science class. Mr. Rothschild was making jokes about rocks again, and soon David was laughing with the others, not thinking of Phillip and Brandon at all.

~

David didn’t know what he’d expected to come from Phillip’s friendship with Brandon, but Brandon certainly did not calm down. The amount of pranks he pulled decreased as they got older, but his cruel remarks didn’t, nor did his arrogance. If anything it seemed to grow, as though it were being stoked by something, some outward force. David couldn’t decide if it was Phillip or Rupert who provoked Brandon more. He told himself it didn’t matter; Brandon was insatiable. Impossible to deal with.

Their sophomore year he and Phillip began sharing a room. Now David almost never saw either of them without the other—in classes which David had with one or the other alone, it was like some strange open wound. Their relationship still didn’t make any sense to him—Brandon resented artistic people, but David saw him in the piano room with Phillip every evening before curfew, lounging in the moth-eaten sofa, reading some or another philosophy book while Phillip played. Brandon hated English literature because he didn’t understand it—his words, eighth grade, spit at David one evening in a rare moment of camaraderie—but he and Phillip sat together on the quad on weekends with books. Phillip read out loud to Brandon—Forester, Waugh; various poets like Yeats and Rimbaud and Eliot. Once, when David and Brandon had been forced to play tennis together, Brandon had smashed the ball so hard across the net it broke his racket, but instead of getting angry he yelled, “The center cannot hold!” and then broke into laughter. David supposed it was a reference of some type; later he saw Brandon recounting it to Phillip who was smiling in a private kind of way. He felt another twist of jealousy; he made himself turn away.

It didn’t make sense, that he should be so intent on the two of them. He had his friends—the twins, and Nicholas, and Wellesley, who came from Surrey, like his mother. Kenneth was his closest friend, not in that strange codependent way of Phillip and Brandon’s but like normal, like buddies in a movie who went for a drink on weekends and stood at each other’s weddings, or something like that. There was Alex in the chess club, at which David excelled nearly as much as tennis. There was David Harper from Latin, who had taught David the rules of Certamen. From Parker Day, their coed rival school in Queens, there was Susie Baker and Laura Aynesworth and Michael Lord and Vivian North. Douglas and Dick Martin, brothers a year apart, who liked to talk about the war in Europe. At the country club there was Arthur Ingleside and Henry Thompson. Vincent Morrison, who he’d known since they were six and at camp together for the first time. David’s mother and father were pleased and proud of the crowd with which he ran. But he couldn’t quite let Brandon and Phillip go. And there was Rupert, too, with his odd ideas, his odd condescending way of speaking. David knew—everyone knew—that he liked Brandon best, or anyway that he continued to indulge him above the others. Specimen under a microscope. David sometimes thought of the butterflies pinned to the boards in the biology lab. It was wrong, too. But he didn’t know how. And he couldn’t stop going to the club meetings—like something intoxicating held him there in that small, stuffy room, every week, listening to Brandon wax poetic about superiority while Rupert watched him not quite smiling and Phillip’s mouth occasionally twitched when he said something particularly clever.

Of everyone Kenneth was the only one who seemed to really understand—more even than the Bradley twins, who continued to call Brandon a freak behind his back, and to ask David why he still went to that club, or why he was still part of tennis when Brandon also refused to quit. Kenneth was genial, steadfast—he had the patient bedside manner of someone who could one day become a doctor of some type. He had no particularly specific interests; if David’s analytical side had tended to himself, he would’ve recognized that he too shared that trait, and that he liked Kenneth for his mildness of character. His parents liked him; Mrs. Kentley in particular treated Kenneth like a second son, patting his cheeks and calling him ‘dear’. It was always easier when David’s mother liked his friends. Kenneth told David to let the whole thing go, that Brandon was just looking for a reaction—that if Phillip couldn’t see that, too bad for him, but David really shouldn’t let it get to him. He said it several times a week. David supposed someday he’d be able to put it in practice.

Their junior year the war broke out in the States. The Bradley twins dropped out without warning to go sign up for the service; so did Nicholas, and the Martin brothers at Parker Day. David wanted to join, but his mother cried so much he gave up, put in for a deferment like the others. His father said he could do more here, anyway.

Brandon and Phillip sneered, or seemed to sneer, at the whole idea of war. Days after it was announced while they studied for their midterms in the library David heard them talking in the shelves; he pulled down a book on Jefferson and pretended to read so he could listen:

“Can you b-believe all those boys that j-joined up for the army?” That was Brandon, disbelieving, scornful. David could just see them through the books, sitting together on the floor with their texts spread open on their laps. Phillip seemed to be touching Brandon’s arm, very lightly, near the wrist. But David knew he had to be seeing things.

“Rupert would approve,” Phillip murmured back.

“T-This is one time when he’s w-wrong,” Brandon said. “It’s like I t-told you Sunday evening. There’s no w-way someone of true s-superiority could f-fight in a war.” He twitched his own hand over Phillip’s ankle—he must have been reaching for a pen. “To r-risk your life for s-something that h-hasn’t even touched you? With m-men you’re never even going to see again in your lifetime?”

“Not even to take down the inferiors on the other side?” Phillip’s voice was gentle; after a moment David realized he was teasing Brandon. But Brandon didn’t seem to mind.

“L-Let the inferiors here take c-care of it,” he said. “You and I c-can just watch them from a p-point of safety and l-laugh.”

“I know what I’d rather be watching,” Phillip said, or anyway that’s what it sounded like he said; David wasn’t sure, because he’d sort of mumbled it into his hand. Brandon started laughing that irritating harsh staccato laugh, and David backed away before either of them could look up and see him. His face was red; he didn’t know why. He knew that Brandon was wrong; war was for everyone. Not just superiors or inferiors, if such a concept even existed. David figured Rupert was just talking to entertain them; he didn’t think someone as smart as Rupert could possibly take Nietzsche’s teachings seriously. War involved the whole country. Brandon was just too self-involved to see it.

~

Their senior year, David shared a class with Brandon and Phillip both. Among other things it was exhausting, because they sat cattycorner to each other directly behind David and as such he was subject to most of their murmured conversations, or the constant crinkle of paper as they passed notes. If Brandon said something to rile up the teacher or another student Phillip laughed to egg him on. Sometimes, shockingly, Phillip spoke up, disruptively; David supposed he was emboldened by Brandon’s presence. It seemed like an administrative mishap to have allowed the two of them to share a class. Though David supposed now they were all almost graduated, and with the war on and half the upperclassmen gone anyway, none of the teachers really cared enough anymore.

It was in this way, unconventional and aggravating though it was, that David discovered what college they were going to.

“Deadlines for the applications are next week,” Brandon said, while the teacher mumbled about the War of 1812 to the blackboard. “And then we’ve got to p-put in our entrance essays.”

“Yeah, but that’s not for a while, is it,” Phillip said. “Like—next semester?”

“If y-you want to get put on the waiting list, sure, you can wait.” Brandon had taken on that flippant, dismissive tone he used with David most of the time. Phillip, instead of reacting annoyed like David would have, just sighed. It was a sound that could only have been bred from familiarity. They’d had this conversation before. Perhaps many times.

“You know I don’t,” Phillip murmured. “But I mean, is it going to make that much of a difference—”

“C-Columbia’s acceptance rate is seven percent,” Brandon said. “My m-mother is on the board, or anyway she used to be—you know we’re going to get in.” We. Inclusive. David didn’t know why it made him shiver. “But we have to put in early.”

“All right,” Phillip said. It sounded like something else, the way he said it. David wanted very badly for a moment to turn around. But the teacher had through some miracle noticed Brandon and Phillip talking, and had turned himself to glare at them.

“Mr. Shaw, Mr. Morgan,” he said, “do you feel like sharing your very scintillating conversation with the class?”

“It’s hardly scintillating,” Brandon said, “and no.” He was laughing; David could hear it in his voice. He got detention, which didn’t seem to bother him much. Phillip got it as well, which David supposed was why. They spent the rest of the class passing notes. David wondered what they said. But when the bell rang as usual Phillip crammed the sheets of paper into his backpack, and he and Brandon threaded their way out of the classroom ahead of everyone else.

Columbia. David had never really considered it. But on his way from the history building to the chemistry building he stopped by the registrar’s office to pick up some application papers for Harvard, and his hand fell on Columbia, too. What the hell. It couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like he was precisely following them, anyway.

~

His father seemed pleased; it was a very practical move, and Henry Kentley was a very practical man. His mother just wept into the phone. His aunt, who occasionally called collect from England, wanted him to apply at Oxford, presumably at his mother’s behest.

Kenneth thought he was out of his mind, applying to the same school as Brandon and Phillip. “You want to get away from them, but you’re applying to their school?”

“They don’t _own_ it,” David reminded him. They were sitting on the quad; it was, he could tell, one of the last nice evenings of the year. The leaves had all nearly fallen from the trees; the air was warm, but hesitantly. He could hear the faint cries of geese in the distance as they migrated south.

“No,” Kenneth said, wrapping his shoelaces around his finger, “but you know you won’t be able to escape them.”

“It’s a big campus, Ken.”

Kenneth tapped his head. He’d recently made a plunge into psychology. “I mean mentally,” he said. “It’ll be a whole thing with you. I know you, Dave. Better just apply at Harvard and Princeton and Yale. Leave Columbia alone. You know that’s the only place they’re going to apply, anyway.”

Distantly David recalled sometime during sophomore year hearing Brandon mention Columbia. But at the time he’d been trying to branch out into groups of friends that didn’t make him want to tear his hair out, so he hadn’t really paid attention.

“Well,” he said, feeling a little foolish, “I might as well put in. I already told my dad I was going to.”

Kenneth shrugged. “It’s your call,” he said. He tore a blade of grass from the ground, balanced it on his knee. “Just please—for the love of god, David. You’re a great friend, really. But don’t call me to whine about Brandon every five minutes if you all get in.”

~

They all got in.

Brandon of course had been furious upon initially learning that David had applied at Columbia. The small and vindictive part of him that he could not quite tamp down was amused by this—he told them over dinner in the city, where they’d gone for a Friday night outing because they hardly ever wanted to eat in the cafeteria anymore. Phillip and Brandon sat across from David and Kenneth, who he’d brought as kind of a second, like in a duel—they ordered their food and then David sat with his mouth pressed into an excited smile until Brandon rolled his eyes and said:

“What, why do you look like that.”

David grinned. It was rare you could get Brandon to play into asking a question like that. “I have some news,” he said. Beside him Kenneth was sipping from his water glass, looking a little like he’d rather be anywhere else. He kept glancing at Phillip, but Phillip was staring at the cigarette carton in his hands, running his thumb over the label.

“Well?” Brandon said, impatient, when David still hadn’t said anything. He knew it was wrong of him to string him along like this, but he couldn’t help it—he knew the twins would have been amused; he’d wanted to write them and say what was going on, but part of him felt like it wouldn’t be right, when they were off taking shelter from bombs in London while David got one over on a schoolboy rival he should’ve really been over years ago.

Still. It was the principle of the thing. He took a deep breath. Phillip was at last looking at David with that same strange unreadable expression he’d ever had; it was almost like pity, but that couldn’t be right, because what on earth could Phillip possibly have that David did not?

“I’ve applied,” David said, as he swallowed his drink, “to Columbia.”

Immediately the tension appeared in a gratifying line all the way down Brandon’s jaw and across his shoulders. His fist against the table clenched. Into his eyes came that same coldness as ever—David knew he shouldn’t be as scared of it as he was, still, as though they were only children.

“I didn’t know you were interested in that school,” he said, after several long moments. His voice was very tight and controlled. Phillip’s entire arm was pressed along Brandon’s and the way they were sitting made it clear he was doing something under the table like maybe kicking at Brandon’s ankle so he’d shut up. Beside David Kenneth had also gone very still. David smiled at Brandon.

“Yes,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t help himself: “Of course I’ve also applied to Harvard because it’s my—”

“Your dad’s alma mater, we know,” Brandon interrupted. He snatched the carton from Phillip’s hand and tore a cigarette out, lighting it between his fingers. The smell of it was as always acrid and disgusting but David decided not to push; he knew how to pick his battles. Or anyway he thought he did. Somehow the entire thing wasn’t quite as satisfying as he’d thought, even when the four of them sat in relative silence for a while with Brandon actually trembling a little from tension and Phillip tracing lines into the condensation on his glass.

Abruptly Brandon said, “Shove over, Phillip,” and when Phillip slid out of the booth Brandon stormed off in the direction of the bathroom. Phillip sighed; he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“‘Scuse me,” he said, very quietly to David and Kenneth. “Congratulations, David,” though it didn’t at all sound sincere, and he headed off too. They were gone for a while. Kenneth drank a little more of his water; when he looked at David, he was smiling thinly.

“Is this—what you wanted?”

No, David thought. But even to Kenneth he could not say so.

“He needed to be put in his place,” he said, and Kenneth sighed. “What? He did. He’s always getting everything, his way all the time, he’s—”

“Yeah, Dave,” Kenneth interrupted, in the same tone David’s father used when he was tired and David had been going on for too long about some unfair call made on the tennis courts. “I get it. Really.”

“Okay,” said David. Then, squeezing Kenneth’s shoulder: “Hey, maybe you can apply to Columbia too,” and that at last made Kenneth laugh.

When Brandon and Phillip came back they both looked a little more relaxed, or anyway Phillip did. Brandon just looked like he was reigning himself in. He sat on the outside of the booth this time, across from Kenneth. He did not much speak for the rest of the dinner, except occasionally to glance at Phillip in that strange silent communicative way he did. They were always looking at each other like that, the two of them, secretive and constant. They smoked their cigarettes and David tried very hard not to say anything about it. Yet it felt as though, somehow, he still hadn’t actually won.

After that dinner Brandon did not really bother David again about the whole Columbia thing. When they all received their acceptance letters David called his parents, who were of course pleased—even more so when he added that he’d gotten accepted at Harvard as well. There was almost a temptation to write to Harvard and tell them he’d be coming in the fall. But the whole thing with Brandon had gone so far at this point that he couldn’t quite make himself do it… So he wrote to Columbia instead. They all went to dinner again to celebrate and Brandon spent a good bit of the time glaring at David in a way he probably thought was very subtle. Several times Phillip murmured his name and Brandon made a visible attempt to relax.

David wrote the twins and Nicholas, who after three months replied with hurriedly scrawled congratulations—Richard said his scarring from the snake bites were at last vindicated, which made David laugh. He knew it was wrong to go to a university simply out of spite—but the thing was done. Anyway it wasn’t as if Columbia offered anything which Harvard could not—still after all this time David was pathetically unsure of what he wanted to do.

Rupert seemed glad for them. There was always a bit of that odd cruelty or condescension in his eyes and tone which David recognized also in Brandon, but whether it was due to his age or otherwise just David’s lack of analytic thinking it was not nearly as strong. He shook David’s hand and smiled; it was missing something. But David couldn’t have said what.

“And what are you majoring in?”

“I’m not sure yet,” David replied; it was his generic typical answer he’d given a hundred times now to all his parents’ friends.

“I see.”

“Maybe psychology,” David said, because Kenneth seemed so intent on it now.

For a moment something in Rupert’s face seemed almost to laugh. “Not philosophy?”

David felt his face heating up. “Oh, well, I mean—”

“David.” Rupert was still smiling. He patted David’s shoulder. “I’m teasing you.”

“Oh, yes.” Brandon did the same thing sometimes, or anyway he used to, back in eighth and ninth grade when he’d still somewhat condescended to speak to David on something like a normal level. “Well. I’m gonna, uh. I’m gonna figure it out when I get there, you know. Mom says it’s fine to take your time with these things.”

“And she’s right,” said Rupert. It felt like a scolding. But David wasn’t sure what he was being scolded for. Not knowing precisely what he wanted? The idea was absurd.

They graduated from Somerville in June 1943. Phillip was sitting three down from David, and kept twisting back in his chair to look at Brandon, two rows back. They were laughing, as usual. David could see Kenneth in the stands next to David’s own parents, and his friend Paul, a wheat-haired sophomore with a perpetually runny nose and bad eyesight. They all four of them waved at David, and cheered when he went up for his diploma. _David Alexander Kentley, Somerville Preparatory for Boys. June 14, 1943. Signed by Dean Carl Francis and President Roger Henriksen._ It was lined with pretty gold curls and the school emblem at the top. David couldn’t stop touching it, even when he gave it to his parents to see. It felt like the first real thing he’d ever done for himself, more real even than the tennis and chess awards he’d received over the years. He went to a party in the evening to celebrate with Kenneth, Paul, and the others in his own grade who had opted out of the war. He wondered in a vague way what Phillip and Brandon were doing; he supposed, really, it didn’t matter.

~

Being at Columbia was a completely different experience to being at Somerville. David rarely if ever saw Phillip or Brandon—he’d decided, ultimately, to go in for a major in English literature, while Phillip for some inane reason was majoring in music theory—not that he didn’t have talent, just that it was a completely useless degree—and Brandon in business with a minor in philosophy. David joined as many things as he could, as he’d done at Somerville—the yearbook club, which was smaller but of course necessary; the chess club, with recommendations; the tennis club, again with recommendations. The Latin club carried over, but David dropped it in favor of a club which met to discuss cars, make/model/year/etc. Alex’s brother Oliver was a sophomore there, and so was Nicholas’ cousin Trenton. David’s roommate, Charles, was an asthmatic sort; he reminded him of Paul.

In November at a USO dance they met Janet Walker, who was beautiful and fashion-forward and went to Radcliffe, the sister school of Harvard. David was immediately drawn to her, the way she carried herself and her careless, casual way of speaking. Of course immediately Brandon began dating her—it was strange, because at Somerville Brandon had never shown even the slightest interest in girls, or in anyone really except Phillip, but here he slotted himself into Janet’s life in that aggravating no-room-for-error way in which he did everything. David, who had not been close to Phillip for a long time, could see the tension in his face, about his eyes and mouth. But he couldn’t—quite—discern its source.

The boys in his tennis club said Brandon and Phillip were queers. David didn’t know about all that—queers were a specific breed of people, who talked a certain way and tossed their wrists and wore too-tight pants on weekends. Brandon occasionally had a certain lilting tone in his voice, but that wasn’t anything—he used that to command people. To get his way in most everything. Brandon was too aggravating and arrogant to be queer. And Phillip wasn’t much of anything.

Midway through December something happened—David didn’t quite know the whole story, because he spent his winter break up in Woodstock with his old buddy Vincent and a few of his new friends from the chess club, but when he came back to Columbia Brandon and Phillip were barely speaking. David was at the time seeing the girl from Parker Day who had gone on to Radcliffe, Susie Baker, and she said they’d had an argument in Boston while Brandon was visiting Janet. David wondered if it could possibly have to do with—those rumors. But then he supposed that was impossible. Susie wasn’t the sort of girl who would keep something like that quiet. Neither was Janet, for that matter. All the same, he was more than a little surprised when Brandon came to his room three days after they’d returned for the spring semester to ask if he’d mind rooming with Phillip for a while.

“I really don’t think we’re supposed to switch roommates, Brandon—”

“For fuck’s sake, Kentley.” Brandon dragged a hand through his hair. He had that same exhausted look he’d worn back in eighth grade. “Just—no one’s going to notice. I c-can’t—” He drew in a breath. He looked at Charles, who shrugged in his mild way. “There,” Brandon said, but it didn’t have its usual triumphant ring. “He’s okay with it.”

“Fine,” David said.

They switched rooms. Phillip was the same as he’d ever been; silent, withdrawn. David wanted desperately to ask what had gone wrong, after all they had hardly spent a second out of each other’s company since ninth grade. But he could not. Phillip’s face was very closed off; even David could read that.

“Do you want—to come to a chess match with me tonight?” he asked at length. Phillip shook his head.

“Just leave me alone,” he muttered into his arm. If David hadn’t known better he might’ve said Phillip was crying.

~

He applied for Harvard a week later. The English literature degree wasn’t working out and he’d heard, he wasn’t sure how reliably, that there was a good psychiatric program at Harvard. At any rate he knew his father would be much happier if he went to his alma mater. For some reason following Phillip and Brandon here hadn’t quite garnered the satisfaction he’d assumed it would.

“You’re going to leave us?” Oliver asked when he told the car club.

“Well, yes,” said David, feeling a little guilty. “But I mean it’s my father’s alma mater, you know.”

“We know,” said Oliver and the others, a little dry. David flushed; he knew he talked about it with some frequency. But then his friends patted his shoulders and congratulated him, and he reminded himself of course not everyone was as spiteful as Brandon.

He thought about telling Phillip. But Phillip didn’t seem entirely present. He went to class; he practiced his music; he came back to the dorm. David wanted to feel sorry for him, but. He’d put himself into this position. Isolation and superiority…

Of course he got into Harvard. Not long after he noticed Phillip and Brandon were again speaking; not long after that he got an amused call from Kenneth in the late spring to say he’d met and was dating Janet. David tried not to be upset. It was natural, he told himself. He’d meet a hundred girls at Radcliffe other than Janet—or Susie, who he’d broken up with recently. He tried, too, not to feel that strange clenching jealousy of Brandon and Phillip and their odd friendship. Not to look at them when they walked across the quad together in the late evenings from the dorm to the library, the way they sat together at the tables studying with their heads pressed together. Queers? It couldn’t be. And yet…

The last night of their freshman year there was a party for David to celebrate his acceptance at Harvard. Everyone showed up: David’s parents, Kenneth, Oliver, Charles, most of the tennis club—and Brandon and Phillip. They spent the majority of the evening talking between themselves as they always did; finally David’s curiosity overcame him and he walked to the champagne table where he could overhear them where they sat in a dark corner together, the side of Phillip’s foot pressed to the side of Brandon’s.

“You’re coming to the farm this summer?” Brandon asked. His voice was very soft; it was completely unlike any way David had ever heard him speak.

“Yeah,” Phillip said. In the half-light David couldn’t really see his face, but he could hear the smile in his voice. “Of course.”

“Okay, I j-just—” Brandon frowned a little bit at his hands. “Wanted to make sure.”

“It’s three days before we usually go,” Phillip said; he put—David was sure he was seeing things, he put his hand on Brandon’s. “You must’ve been pretty sure already.” It was that same light, teasing tone David had heard before; it was shocking to believe he could get away with it. He could just see the edge of Brandon’s smile.

“Shut up,” Brandon said. It was hard to believe he was the same person who used to yell at David for singing off key in the showers. He looped an arm for a moment around Phillip’s shoulders; he said something into his ear which David couldn’t hear but which made Phillip blush, and then smile, a slow, soft thing. It was certainly not the way David had ever looked when Kenneth had said something to amuse him. Even in private.

He backed away; he walked to the other end of the room. Paul, Kenneth, and Charles were engaged in a very deep discussion about Batman which David quickly fit his way into. Not long after Brandon and Phillip left; Phillip murmured his congratulations and Brandon clapped David on the shoulder. David decided to ignore the mocking amusement in his eyes. With any luck, after this, he’d never have to see either of them again.

~

Of course they loved him at Harvard. He saw regularly and became sort-of friends with Janet, who seemed intent on going steady with Kenneth. Not that this bothered David, who himself had plenty of girls to go with from the tennis club in Boston proper, and the croquet club which had been set up on the front lawn of the university. He majored for a while in psychiatry, then switched back to English lit when his friend Daniel told him the program was better here. For a while he tried history and nursing—he didn’t have the steady hands for one and the attention span for the other, so he let it go.

The war ended in Europe in May ’45. The Bradley twins were among the first to come home; they’d been stationed in Brussels and spoke French fluently, with near-perfect accents. They started up at Harvard, majoring each in English lit. David wanted to ask about the war, but he didn’t think it was necessarily his place. So he told them about Brandon and Phillip, because he knew it would entertain them, and asked for advice on Janet— _just let it go, there’s plenty of ‘em now that the war’s ending._ At around the same time as the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki David discovered he didn’t have enough credit hours in any particular subject to graduate in ’47 like he’d intended; as such he forced himself to stick with accounting for a while, until he realized he didn’t have a head for math or really even for business. Then he switched to general studies; it seemed best for everyone involved. If his father was disappointed he didn’t say anything.

He went to Brandon and Phillip’s graduation; he told himself it was to see his old friends who had been in the tennis and chess clubs and who he’d kept somewhat in contact with since leaving Columbia, but he knew the truth. Brandon got his diploma with that same self-assured arrogant smile as he did everything; it was unsurprising to see he hadn’t changed at all in four years. They spoke briefly afterwards; Phillip seemed oddly recalcitrant, more so than usual; anyway he would hardly look David in the eyes. The only time he smiled was when Brandon nudged him gently in the ribs and whispered something evidently to make him laugh. David had the overwhelming sensation he himself was being made fun of. But he couldn’t figure out why and he couldn’t bring himself to care—he was nearly twenty-two, and it was past time to let all those types of things go.

In the fall of ’47 Janet and Kenneth split up. It happened very suddenly; no one really knew why, because neither of them would go into much detail about it, but David found Janet walking alone in the quad at Harvard on Sunday. She’d been working a little here and there for their university newsletter despite having graduated the spring prior and it was easy to see she’d been crying.

“Hey,” David said.

She looked up; wiped at her eyes with her handkerchief. “Oh, hey.”

David gestured at a bench. “Wanna sit?”

“Sure,” Janet said, with some hesitance. Together they sat in the shade of a tree; beneath them the metal of the bench was very cold. After that it was easy, almost uncannily so, for David to move in and go steady with Janet at last. It sometimes felt like she was looking right through him when they spoke or went on a date. But David knew he’d always been relatively awful at reading people; as such he let it go, he told himself he was very happy with her, and her writing, and his general studies major, which was a little dull but certainly more steady than anything else he’d tried. Anyway he was going to graduate, finally, in the spring of ’48. And from there there’d be a job, and marriage— It was all very sudden, or so it felt. But David knew that’s just how the world worked. His parents were happy. Did it really matter if he wasn’t all the way settled?

~

“Kentley!” Royce Brett’s voice rang out across the hall. “Phone’s for you!”

David was half-expecting Janet to call confirming their date for the weekend; as such he was surprised to hear Phillip’s voice. He and Phillip hadn’t spoken at all since Rupert’s retirement party from Somerville last year in the early summer. His father had said he ran into him at a furniture store last fall. But David wasn’t bothered; he didn’t have time to be. Anyway he was talking now—

“Do you want to come to a party?” he asked.

“Sure,” David said, because he was always game for a party. “When and where?”

“It’s not until May,” Phillip said; currently it was early April. “It’ll be at my, at my and Brandon’s place.”

So they had a place together. This was—David supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. He cleared his throat:

“Sure,” he said again. “What time?”

“About seven,” Phillip said. “Uh—you don’t have to bring anything.”

“Okay,” David said, jotting down small notes in his planner. “I’ll come; it sounds great, Phil.”

Then the phone made a crackling noise, like it was being shuffled along—there was a pause, and then Brandon’s voice came unexpectedly over the line: “And David?” he said; it sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “Come early, would you?”


End file.
